Hey, it's Rachel Cook, your modern mentor.

I'm the founder of Lead Above Noise, a firm specializing in activating workplaces,

helping leaders end the tug of war between driving results and employee engagement.

We do leader boot camps, keynotes, and pulse checks to help you drive both together.

So the other day, I was on a train.

I was prepping for a meeting, silently, in my head.

But a few rows behind me, a woman was on the phone, presumably with her boss.

She was in tears, listing the many, many items on her plate,

claiming the near impossibility of getting it all done.

And she sounded pretty hopeless. Over hearing this, and putting aside briefly my personal

feelings about very loud phone calls on otherwise very silent trains, I was having two

simultaneous reactions. The first was, I feel you. We have all been there. She's clearly

carrying more than she can handle, and she's crying out for help. But the second was kind of,

oh, friend, while what you're saying is totally valid, you are not doing yourself or your

personal brand any favors in how you're saying it,

which got me thinking about other conversations as well that I think we need to be having.

But having more constructively, in ways that do three key things,

they transmit our point, they trigger action, and they preserve, even serve, our personal brands, you know, the ways in which

we are generally perceived by others at work. So today, I would love to share some of those

situations along with hopefully some helpful suggestions on how to manage these tricky

conversations. The first is, I'm overwhelmed and I need some help.

So let's stick with our friend on the train. Again, she's overwhelmed and looking for some support

...